Only through inactive action does one become a victim; by exercising proactive action against evil one walks in their own power creating resistance to that which chooses to destroy humanity and the preciousness of life.
Fight America; don't become a victim to the evil that is destroying our world!
_Donald F. Truax (Tough times don't last, tough people do)
“For the last 30 years, I have witnessed and experienced the severe restraints on any free and balanced discussion of the facts.
This reluctance to criticize any policies of the Israeli government is because of the extraordinary lobbying efforts of the American-Israel Political Action Committee and the absence of any significant contrary voices.
“It would be almost politically suicidal for members of Congress to espouse a balanced position between Israel and Palestine, to suggest that Israel comply with international law or to speak in defense of justice or human rights for Palestinians.”
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one of the world’s major sources of instability. Americans are directly connected to this conflict, and increasingly imperiled by its devastation.
It is the goal of If Americans Knew to provide full and accurate information on this critical issue, and on our power – and duty – to bring a resolution.
By Coleen Rowley - Former FBI Special Agent - Posting #130
Why Those Who Value Constitutional Rights and Civil Liberties Must Ask Congress to Initiate "Church Committee"-type Hearings
-------------------------------------------- Authors Special Note:
I'm on record as of 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2011 stating; since leaving SAIC Science Applications International Corporation I've been under constant surveillance, constant harassment by the U.S. Government, its agency's and Science Application International Corporation.
R E A D:The Ominous Parallels Report;moreover, 'WHO' was the "Magistrate" the night I was run off the road (2) twice; (10) days before finding my father dead @ his home? -------------------------------------------- Related Posts:
From Vic Livingston: Good point Vic!, but, The American Gestapo will not take itself down.
"...misplaced zeal, incompetence and opportunism?" No, Don. This is purposeful -- a PURGE of American society, a "social cleansing," a slow-kill genocide. And the good people on the inside are paralyzed by FEAR -- because they KNOW it's a slow-kill genocide, using the government's cell tower mast-mounted microwave radio frequncy directed energy weapon system to silently neutralize those who dare to stand in the way of this social cleansing. Trying to put lipstick on a pig is not the way to restore the rule of law.
As Jesus said, "The truth (and ONLY the truth) shall set you free." If the elected leadership realized that some of THEM are under silent attack, they would give the good people on the inside the headroom they need to take down the American Gestapo. Writing this off as "misplaced zeal" strikes me as disingenuous psyops. Vic Livingston
Why has Congress not yet awoken to the fact that since 9-11 we have been sailing into a perfect storm? Here are just some of the turbulent winds blowing and pushing officials in the wrong direction:
• Politicians who stoke the fear of terrorism while forcing underling officials to promise they can protect the public by "pre-empting" all threats, hyped and unhyped;
• The erosion of the prior legal safeguards, even the firmly entrenched ethical and legal (jus cogens) principles prohibiting torture;
• The broad legal authority given to the executive by Congress in such laws as the Patriot Act and Military Commissions Act, and also the abuse of "presidential war powers" through warrantless monitoring and authorization of offshore, indefinite detention;
• Perverse, counterproductive job and profit incentives for the 854,000 agents, analysts, operatives and private contractors/consultants who staff the "Top Secret America" surveillance-security complex;
• Lack of any effective, independent oversight (despite the 9-11 Commission's prescient and serious concerns enumerated years ago), as exemplified by the hobbled Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board;
• And the basic need for war presidencies to maintain momentum in the face of popular disapproval of the ongoing conflicts and occupations in the Mideast.
Such systemic forces will always produce a similar bad result -- for our rights and our safety.
Even the rather conservative Washington Post is quite worried about what's likely to come of this clearly out-of-control pressure cooker called "Top Secret America." If it cannot be quickly reined in, we are almost certain to witness and suffer the worst of Cold War McCarthyism and Vietnam COINTELPRO abuses. That prediction is based on what has happened before when militarist forces turned inward on U.S. citizens. Even if government officials are well-intentioned, these forces increase the chances for error and opportunism. Some would say we've entered a perfect storm already, given the numerous examples of improper targeting of domestic advocacy groups, most recently the FBI raids on various anti-war activists' offices and homes in Minneapolis and Chicago.
Let's not forget how the "war on terror" was originally sold to the American public: as "Let's fight them over there so we don't have to fight them here." But Homeland Security now admits the "war on terror" is increasingly being fought at home.
FBI agents are motivated, for instance, to check off "statistical achievements" by sending well-paid, manipulative confidential informants into mosques and apparently also into various advocacy and anti-war groups. In the Iowa heartland, for instance, FBI surveillance, trash searches, terrorism database paperwork, and "statistical accomplishments" regarding a few student protesters in Iowa City before the 2008 Republican National Convention fill hundreds of file pages without providing any plausible justification for the operation.
These (a)buses attack our basic constitutional right to dissent without making us safer. Relatively simple ways to address and reduce each of these counterproductive forces do exist, however -- ways that preserve our liberties while actually enhancing our collective security. The list below outlines the most serious current civil liberties problems and the potential fixes. It is based on my years teaching constitutional criminal procedure to FBI agents and police officers, and also on my firsthand exposure to and understanding of some of the pre- and post-9-11 failures:
1) In the course of arguing the Holder v Humanitarian Law Project case in the Supreme Court (decided in late June of this year), Georgetown Law Professor David Cole warned explicitly that this law could be used to improperly target and prosecute a wide range of humanitarian, human rights and peace advocacy groups, and prevent them from exercising freedom of speech and other First Amendment rights. However, Cole failed in his arguments to overturn a few words in the Patriot Act that broadened "Material Support of Terrorism" to encompass "expert advice and assistance" to designated "foreign terrorist organizations." (For more information, see "How Easy Is It for Peaceful People to Violate the Patriot Act?") The problematic Supreme Court decision, which essentially makes advocacy of peace and humanitarian issues illegal with respect to 40-some groups designated by the State Department, is surely something that Congress never intended in hastily passing the hundreds of pages of Patriot Act revisions in October 2001. As a result, missionaries, fair election proponents and humanitarian workers could be placed in legal jeopardy. People like Three Cups of Tea author Greg Mortenson, who had to meet with a variety of foreign nationals in war zones in order to forge a consensus to build schools for girls in Pakistan and Afghanistan, could be in trouble, as could former president Jimmy Carter, who engages in pro-democracy efforts to monitor election fraud in many places in the world. The paradox is that true non-government-affiliated efforts aimed at furthering education, humanitarian assistance, free elections and non-violent conflict resolution in other parts of the world are widely recognized as more effective and beneficial than U.S. military or U.S. State Department-controlled efforts.
The simple fix would be to revise the phrase "expert advice and assistance" in the Patriot Act, clarifying that Congress never intended to define "material aid or comfort" to designated organizations so that it would chill or hamper the free speech rights of members of non-governmental humanitarian, peace and pro-democracy groups.
2) "Pre-emptive" security -- with its false promise of preventing all future acts of terrorism, and its accompanying pressures -- should be understood as a real Mission Impossible (not to say Mission Stupid). It led to the immediate erosion of the post-Church Committee Attorney General (AG) Guidelines that required varying levels of factual justification before targeting any domestic group. Shortly after 9-11, AG Ashcroft began by loosening the old guidelines and allowing FBI agents to go into churches, mosques and other public places. The final nail in the coffin was the decision by the Bush Administration, in one of its last official acts, to reverse the need to demonstrate some level of factual justification and promulgate a new and very low legal standard for all types of cases. This new standard means, in effect, that the FBI has only to deny that a group has been targeted based BOLDsolely on its exercise of First Amendment rights. Civil libertarians were initially aghast at the prospect of this total erasure of any real investigative guidelines. But knowing of Obama's background as a constitutional lawyer, they thought it better to bring the issue to Bush's successor. It should be noted that the demise of the old AG Guidelines came after the Inspector General (IG) discovered that the FBI had served hundreds of thousands of mistake-ridden and unjustified National Security Letters, and also found many compliance problems in the FBI's opening of cases and handling of informants.
Simple fix:It's fine to create one set of guidelines for all crime programs. However, some reasonable level of factual justification should be required before the FBI or other federal law enforcement agency can target a group or individual. The Department of Justice (DOJ) IG should immediately undertake a review of all "terrorism enterprise investigations" begun by the FBI after 2006, when the IG's prior investigation ended.
3) The blurring of protest activities and dissent with terrorism dovetailed with the launching of U.S. wars after 9-11. For example, in October 2003, the FBI put out "Intelligence Bulletin 89," which focused on protesters' plans for the Free Trade Area of the Americas meetings in Miami and anti-war marches in Washington, D.C. I personally made an IG complaint to the DOJ IG about this blurring, but it was punted back to the FBI and then swept under the rug. New York Times reporter Eric Lichtblau exposed the problematic Bulletin but the DOJ retaliated by yanking Lichtblau's press pass, and the FBI ordered its 56 field divisions to cease contact with the reporter. (The sorry episode is described beginning on page 122 of Lichtblau's book, Bush's Law: The Remaking of American Justice.) Perhaps if that overly defensive posture had not been taken, problems would not have reached the proportions later found in the September 2010 report, "A Review of the FBI's Investigations of Certain Domestic Advocacy Groups." The wrongheaded mindset that dominated law enforcement almost immediately after the launching of the Iraq War (and the larger "war on terror") is most clearly seen in what a spokesman for the California Anti-Terrorism Information Center (CATIC) said when forced in 2003 to defend his agency's unjustified targeting of anti-war protesters without any factual evidence. CATIC Spokesman Van Winkle, apparently without thinking too hard, reasoned that evidence wasn't needed to issue warnings on war protesters: "You can make an easy kind of a link that, if you have a protest group protesting a war where the cause that's being fought against is international terrorism, you might have terrorism at that [protest]. You can almost argue that a protest against [the "war on terror"] is a terrorist act." In a similar vein, the Department of Defense (DOD) for years administered an annual mandatory anti-terrorism test that equated protest with terrorism. The test asked, "What is an example of low-level terrorism activity?" The correct answer was "protest."
Similarly, listen to the compelling testimony of anti-drilling activist Virginia Cody after she discovered she had been spied on by the Pennsylvania Department of Homeland Security by authorities who actively worked with industry officials to quash dissent
Also noteworthy is the fact that Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTFs) and Fusion Centers combine local and state police jurisdiction with federal jurisdiction. So crowd control, something not usually within federal jurisdiction, becomes a "joint" activity. The CIA has members on these joint task forces and fusion centers, even though the CIA charter bars the organization from operating domestically.
The fix would be to stop equating protest, including acts of civil disobedience, with terrorism. The Patriot Act's definition of domestic terrorism begins with these words: "Acts dangerous to human life...." Protest and dissent - and even acts of civil disobedience involving trespass and minor property damage - do not constitute acts of terrorism. Issues of crowd control, even during large marches and rallies, do not normally threaten national security and should not involve federal authorities.
4) Front-loaded "statistical achievements" are the main way of evaluating job performance inside the FBI and probably the other 3,000 or so agencies and contractors thought to be operating in "Top Secret America." The 854,000 operatives, agents, analysts, private contractors and consultants (believed to average about $90,000 per year in salary) are under more than a little pressure to prove they are earning their generous paychecks and in competition with each other to move up the ranks.So an elaborate grading system is used that checks the initial projection of work in a quantitative, not qualitative way. An FBI agent, for instance, collects "stats" for opening files, disseminating information, adding individuals to a terrorist database or a watch list, serving subpoenas and national security letters for records, recruiting and contacting secret sources and informants, executing searches/seizures, making arrests, and getting people charged and/or convicted. Given the change of emphasis from prosecution to intelligence data collection and analysis, more and more of the "stats" do not involve any judicial oversight. The danger exists that the pressure of producing "stats" would encourage FBI agents and personnel of the other 3,000 entities to open fruitless investigations and try to fit garden-variety crimes into the terrorism category.
Pressure to "pre-empt" plus lack of oversight in managing "top-echelon informants" lead to repeated examples of opportunistic targeting and entrapment of people not predisposed to commit crimes.
Cases that don't pan out or were never justified to begin with, like the "terrorism enterprise investigation" of the students in Iowa City referred to earlier, can fulfill this unending need for "stats." Ultimately, if no quality-over-quantity mechanism is found to evaluate work performance, agencies are likely to return to the Cold War-era "post and float" system of "papering files." McCarthyism and COINTELPRO-type abuses are bound to recur, this time with "terrorist" substituted for the old bogey of "communist."
Revise the method of collecting and proving "statistical accomplishments" to favor quality over quantity. At a minimum, ensure that "statistical achievements" are subtracted when actions are found to have unjustifiably targeted advocacy groups or interfered with a person's constitutional rights without proper cause.
5) Because the 9-11 Commission was very concerned about the much greater authority being given to the FBI and other agencies in the "war on terror," three of their 41 recommendations concerned the creation of a Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB). The FBI Director assured the ACLU that civil liberties would be upheld. The PCLOB was statutorily forced on Bush by Congress, but he assured its powerlessness and later dismantled it. Obama has thus far totally ignored the issue by not appointing anyone to the PCLOB.
Fix the situation by immediately appointing five PCLOB commissioners and empower them to interact with and provide mandated training to all national security agencies, contractors and consultants. In addition, allow PCLOB to directly hear and evaluate whistleblower complaints relating to abuses, and to access reports from Civil Liberties/Privacy Officers in each agency, as is done by the Office of Government Ethics.
6) Intelligence failures as well as abuses are the predictable outcome of massive and irrelevant data collections, which only add hay to the haystack and make it even harder to spot patterns. Abuses and failures result from excessive over-classification (see "WikiLeaks and 9-11: What If?") and improper use of the "State Secrets" privilege, which keeps cases out of the courts and negates government whistleblower protection. The English historian Lord Acton, who observed that power corrupts, also noted that, "Everything secret degenerates, even the administration of justice; nothing is safe that does not show how it can bear discussion and publicity."
Thisgreat cartoondrawn by Ben Sargent says it all but only begins to capture the irony of our current situation. While governmental targeting of domestic advocacy, peace and environmental groups are jaw-dropping revelations, the even worse news is that these same agencies have failed to stop real terrorist violence and attempted violence. No government agency connected the dots before Fort Hood shooterNidal Malik Hasankilled 13 and wounded 30, flight passenger Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab tried to ignite his "underwear bomb" in the air over Detroit orFaisal Shahzadplanted his car bomb in Times Square. Yet all of these terrorist events involved individuals in direct communication with the very same Yemeni cleric who was also connected to three of the 9-11 hijackers.
The news gets even worse. We now know that theCIA ignored prior warningsregarding a suicide bomber they were hoping to use as a double agent who attacked a CIA outpost in eastern Afghanistan, and that the scout who planned the terrorist attacks in Mumbai in 2008 was a formerDEA informantwho U.S. officials had sent to train in Pakistan. Yet the FBI had been warned years before that the DEA informant worked for Al Qaeda.
Why would joint terrorism task forces go after American students and peace and labor activists while failing to detect and stop genuine acts of terrorism? This combination of misplaced zeal, incompetence and opportunism has consequences for our freedom and our safety. It is time for Top Secret America to ask itself whether its own flawed and contradictory assumptions and strategies are furnishing "material aid to terrorism."
"And Ye Shall Know The Truth And The Truth Shall Set You Free"
That the notorious No Child Left Behind Act includes a sneaky section that requires high schools to turn over private information on students to military recruiters?And that the Pentagon has created an illegal database of 30 million 16-25 year-olds, including names, addresses, email addresses, cell phone numbers, ethnicities, social security numbers, extracurricular activities, and areas of study?Yikes.
What do we do? Any way you look at it, this is a family privacy nightmare, another strong-arming of our local schools, and a creepy warm-up to a possible draft. However, it's also a great reason to get together and take action.So, whether you're a parent, teacher, student, school administrator, veteran or just another adamant American concerned about privacy rights, look for an action that you like and JOIN US!
By Dave Lindorff
At the local YMCA today, I ran into a boy who was a childhood friend of my son’s. As my kid goes to a public arts high school in Philadelphia outside of our local school district, I don’t see much of his old grade-school friends any more. This boy, who used to be over at our house years ago at least once a week, recognized me right away though, and said, “Hey Mr. Lindorff, I haven’t seen you in years. How’s Jed!”
I was impressed by how he’d grown up, tall and strong looking. He was headed for the basketball court. I asked him, since both he and my son are seniors this year, where he was applying for college, and he stunned me by saying he had signed up for the Marines. “I’m going to be going in after graduation,” he said proudly. “The recruiter came to school, and he convinced me it’s a good move.”
I asked him what he planned to do, and he said, “Helicopter gunner! I’m really excited and proud!”
This was really shocking. This kid doesn’t own a gun. I doubt if he’s ever shot at anything except maybe a target with a .22 rifle at Boy Scout Camp, and now he’s all excited about manning a machine gun in a helicopter, where he’ll be shooting down at Afghan fighters–and inevitably at civilians, too–in a matter of months.
I really didn’t know what to say. I awkwardly told him “congratulations,” because I could see he was proud of his “accomplishment” and because I didn’t want to have him cut me off as a possible confidante. Then I added, “You know of course that I’m not really in favor of what the Marines are doing?”
He smiled and said, “Yeah, I know.”
“Well, good luck and stay safe,” I said, again not knowing what else to say. How could I, standing in the hall there, tell him that he was simply signing on to be another expendable tool in the American Empire’s effort to subdue an impoverished people on the far side of the world who pose absolutely no threat to America? And while I don’t want to see him killing people in Afghanistan, I also want him to come home safely.
Unaware of my conflicted state of mind, and of how upset I was at his news, he ran off to play his game, at least for now still just another kid on a basketball court.
Recruiters in high schools want to put our kids in helmets
I had finished my run, so I headed for the exit to get my car and go home, when I ran into the boy’s mother and older sister, both just coming into the building. I hadn’t seen either of them in at least a year either.
They both greeted me and asked how my family was, and what my son’s college plans were. After I had caught them up, I said, a bit hesitantly, “I ran into your son. He told me he’s joining the Marines.”
His mother looked upset and said, “Yes. I don’t know. We were going over colleges with him, and getting ready to work on his applications, and then he told us he wanted to enlist.”
“I hear he’s going to be a helicopter gunner,” I said.
The mother stiffened and looked at her daughter, a senior in college who looked surprised, too. “He said he was going to be a helicopter mechanic!” she said.
“Oops,” I told them. “I guess I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“No,” she said. “I’m going to have to talk with him. But the trouble is, if that’s what he says he’s going to do, there’s nothing we can do to stop him.”
Well, maybe, and maybe not. I’d certainly try if it were my son, starting with showing him that horrifying footage of a bloodthirsty US helicopter crew’s joke-filled slaughter of a bunch of innocent civilians in Baghdad, including two employers of Reuters. I’d also have him read the letter of apology to the Iraqi victims’ families, written by two soldiers, former Army Specialists Josh Stieber and Ethan McCord, who had appeared in that video because they came on the scene of slaughter at the end, and realized what had been done was an atrocity.
But while it may tragically be too late for my son’s childhood friend, who has already signed on the dotted line, there is something we can do to stop more of this kind of thing from happening, and that is to protest the actions of Marine recruiters and recruiters from the other branches of the military in our public high schools.
The schools have been told, thanks to a law passed by Congress, that they must allow recruiters into high schools to speak with students and to try to lure them into signing up. Parents have a right to have their children’s names removed from recruiting lists so they won’t be personally invited to meet with a recruiter, or get recruiting literature sent to them, but they are still free when roaming the halls, to go see a recruiter on their own.
The only answer to this effort to suck our kids into service of the Empire as more cannon-fodder is to demand, and to provide, an alternative.
Contact your local Veterans for Peace chapter or nearest Iraq Veterans Against the War Chapter, and urge them to send a representative to talk sense and reality to the kids at your high school. If you’re a veteran, volunteer to go yourself, and tell kids why signing up is a bad idea. If you’re not a veteran, or relative of a veteran, get people with experience to go and tell what war is really about, and about why it’s not what America should be doing. (Colleague John Grant, who is with VfP, says don’t expect getting a counter-recruitment presence in your high school to be easy.
Most schools only allow such speakers to go to a specific teacher’s classroom, not to an assembly session, whereas the most appropriate thing would be to have access to match whatever the recruiters are offered. That doesn’t mean VFP or IVAW activists aren’t anxious to get access, so contact them and try to get them to the kids.)
If you want a good argument, check out the little film at the bottom of our home page, which quotes Marine Brigadier General Smedley Butler, and is addressed to parents, and particularly mothers of young children.
Stop the propagandizing of our kids into becoming soldiers for Empire. We’ve had enough death and killing!
"And Ye Shall Know The Truth And The Truth Shall Set You Free"
Again, thanks goes out the the 'Senator' for this link ;)
Authors Special Note: I did a posting on this a year ago and am on record stating that as a TI I know that the torture at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib are a "by-product" of something much more sinister that is going on in our world.
My hope is that one day these programs will be exposed and to that end The Ominous Parallels website seeks to educate the public about these kinds of weapons, operations, players and the effect it is having on our world.
More important is how the inhumane actions of our government parallels that of Nazi Germany between 1933 - 1945.
It sounds like something out of a dystopian science fiction novel, but it's not.
A new report from a secretive, highly influential group of scientists is urging the Department of Defense to begin collecting and mapping the full genome of all military personnel -- a move that could well give the Pentagon the ability to select for certain genetic predispositions.
Noting the dramatic decrease in the cost of fully mapping individuals' genomes, the report suggests that some traits relevant to war-fighting "are likely to have a strong genetic component, for which better understanding may lead to improved military capabilities."
And, possibly even more attractive to the Pentagon brass, gene-mapping could even lead to "medical cost containment."
What traits -- or "phenotypes" -- are we talking about here? The report, which was web-published on Thursday by Steven Aftergood on his Secrecy News blog, explains:
These phenotypes might pertain to short- and long-term medical readiness, physical and mental performance, and response to drugs, vaccines, and various environmental exposures, all of which will have different features in a military context. More specifically, one might wish to know about phenotypic responses to battlefield stress, including post-traumatic stress disorder, the ability to tolerate conditions of sleep deprivation, dehydration, or prolonged exposure to heat, cold, or high altitude, or the susceptibility to traumatic bone fracture, prolonged bleeding, or slow wound healing.
As if the Pentagon wasn't sitting on enough data already, the report envisions a huge new database (more likely than not run by some massive defensecontractors). "The DoD will benefit by organizing personnel data into phenotypes of relevance to the military, then correlating those phenotypes with genetic information," it says.
The report also ominously and vaguely alludes to the possible weaponization of genetic information. "It may be beneficial to know the genetic identities of an adversary," the report says.
The report was submitted by an anonymous group of high-level scientists known as Project Jason -- or the Jasons. Founded in 1960, the Jasons are a group of top-flight scientists who spend each summer solving problems for the government. Some of their previous, unclassified reports can be found here.
The official overseeing the distribution of the report within the Pentagon told HuffPost on Thursday that it is only one contribution to the deliberations within the Defense Department about how to adjust to advances in genetic technology.
"The Jasons are one of many inputs that we take in, trying to get a variety of thoughts and ideas that are not all necessarily mainstream," said Melissa Flagg, the director for technical intelligence in the Pentagon's research and engineering department. "We don't want to be hostage to groupthink.
"But it doesn't necessarily mean that, just because a group of smart people thought it, that it is the future or will happen."
The report barely touches on the ethical ramifications of its recommendations. But, Flagg said: "This is not our only input. And why would you ask a bunch of scientists to talk to you about something they're not qualified to talk about?"
Ann Finkbeiner, a science writer and blogger, who wrote a book about Project Jason in 2006, told HuffPost that many Jasons have been Nobel Prize winners.
"My feel for the track record is that they are taken very seriously," she said. "And I think a lot of their ideas sort of end up in programs," she said, even if their fingerprints aren't obvious.
"They are not a bunch of crackpots at all. They occasionally get a little blue-sky, but they're taken seriously."
They also treasure their anonymity, Finkbeiner said.
Laurie Zoloth, a bioethicist at Northwestern University, said she worries that the report overstates science's capacity to predict things based on genes. "This is really hard and complicated, and may not be predictive at all," she said. "Sequencing isn't analysis, and the key is analysis. This report is about the cheapening of the sequencing, but it's not about the acuity of the analysis."
And then there are the moral hazards. "The problem is not collecting information and analyzing it, it is using the information for evil, to harm innocent people, or to discriminate against persons simple because of the physical circumstances of their birth," Zoloth said.
The report does includes some caveats. For instance, it warns that "[a]cting on genotype information that is not convincingly linked to specific phenotypes could lead to erroneous and detrimental decision making."
But it concludes with great urgency:
DNA sequencing is already cheap enough to initiate the era of personal genome sequencing and further reductions in cost will make human genome sequencing increase in scope from hundreds of people (current) to millions of people (probably within three years).... [T]he DoD and the VA should affiliate with or stand up a genotype/phenotype analysis program that addresses their respective needs. Waiting even two years to initiate this process may place them unrecoverably behind in the race for personal genomics information and applications.
"That's a very direct and unambiguous piece of advice," said Aftergood, who runs the Federation of American Scientists' Project on Government Secrecy. "There's no beating around the bush; they tell you exactly what they think."
But is it called for?
"Questions about control and exploitation quickly become front and center," Aftergood said. "I think all of us should be concerned about the advancing state of genetic research and its susceptibility to improper or thoughtless use."
Furthermore, he said: "It lends itself to corporate control and for-profit exploitation of genetic data, which is the most intimately private information there could possibly be. Your genetic code is more private and more unique to you than anything else in the universe."
Aftergood noted the report's mention of what it called a "particularly noteworthy project" in Hong Kong that "involves the sequencing of 2,000 school children to look for markers that correlate with educational test scores."
Many of our traits, after all, do not correlate directly to our genes, but are a function of our environment, and of our choices.
Zoloth said there are many ways the genetic information could be used by the Pentagon in a protective way, for instance by reducing certain soldiers' exposure to chemicals to which they are particularly sensitive.
Nevertheless, the report clearly raises the specter of a future military in which assignments are based on genetics rather than ability, or training, or effort, or choice -- or free will.
"And Ye Shall Know The Truth And The Truth Shall Set You Free"
By Richard Brodie Author's special note:Given the 'spin' on recent events, I felt it would be a great ideal to give the reader some insight into how the United States Government exercises the 'perception management' system to design public opinion in hopes of serving 'its' purpose offull spectrum domainanceover our 'own' thoughts and feelings.
Summary
Virus of the Mind is the first popular book devoted to the science of memetics, a controversial new field that transcends psychology, biology, anthropology, and cognitive science. Memetics is the science of memes, the invisible but very real DNA of human society.
In Virus of the Mind, Richard Brodie carefully builds on the work of scientists Richard Dawkins, Douglas Hofstadter, Daniel Dennett, and others who have become fascinated with memes and their potential impact on our lives. But Brodie goes beyond science and dives into the meat of the issue: is the emergence of this new science going to have an impact on our lives like the emergence of atomic physics did in the Cold War?
Brodie would say the impact will be at least as great. While atomic bombs affect everybody's life, viruses of the mind touch lives in a more personal and more pernicious way.
Mind viruses have already infected governments, educational systems, and inner cities, leading to some of the most pervasive and troublesome problems of society today: youth gangs, the welfare cycle, the deterioration of the public schools, and ever-growing government bureaucracy.
Viruses of the mind are not a future worry: they are here with us now and are evolving to become better and better at their job of infecting us. The recent explosion of mass media and the information superhighway has made the earth a prime breeding ground for viruses of the mind.
Will there be a mental plague? Will only some of us survive with our free will intact? Brodie weaves together science, ethics, and current events as he raises these and other very disturbing questions about memes.
About the Author
Richard Brodie was Microsoft chairman Bill Gates's personal technical assistant and the original author of Microsoft Word, one of the world's best-selling computer programs. Educated at Harvard, he is the also the best-selling author of Getting Past OK. An accomplished speaker, he has appeared on more than 80 television and radio shows including two appearances on Donahue and NBC's Today. He can also be seen engaged in his hobby, playing the major televised poker tournaments.
Introduction: Crisis of the Mind
Because understanding this new science involves a significant change in the way people think about the mind and culture, it has been difficult for people to grasp. As with any paradigm shift, memetics doesn’t fit into our existing way of looking at things, of understanding the world.
The trick to learning a new paradigm is to set aside your current one while you’re learning rather than attempt to fit the new knowledge into your existing model. It won’t fit! If you’re willing to set aside your current thinking long enough to consider four concepts, some or all of which may be new to you, you’ll be rewarded with an understanding of memetics. With that understanding, I hope, comes a call to action for anyone concerned with the future of human life.
The first concept—the star of the show—is the meme, which I introduce in Chapter 1 and which plays a leading role throughout this book. The meme, which rhymes with "beam," is the basic building block of culture in the same way the gene is the basic building block of life. As I outline in Chapter 2, memes are not only the building blocks of culture on a large scale—making up countries, languages, religions—but also on a small scale: memes are the building blocks of your mind, the programming of your mental "computer."
Secondis the concept of virus. It’s well known that viruses exist in biology and in the world of computers. Now we’ll see how they show up in the world of mind and culture, the world of memetics. In Chapter 3, I’ll draw parallels between the three different universes that viruses live in to show what we can expect from mind viruses in the future.
The third concept that contributes to this paradigm shift is evolution. Evolution is one of those words that many people use, thinking they are talking about the same thing, but really having different ideas of what evolution is and means. I’ll discuss scientists’ most current theory of evolution in Chapter 4, and how it applies to memes in Chapter 5.
The fourth concept necessary to understanding mind viruses is the new science of evolutionary psychology. This field examines the biases and mechanisms of our minds that evolved to support our survival and reproduction. Some of these biases take the form of psychological buttons that can be pushed to penetrate our mental defenses. I called this part of the book "Crisis of the Mind" rather than simply "Introduction" because the former pushes more buttons: it attracts more attention and more people will read it. I called this book Virus of the Mind rather than Introduction to Memetics for the same reason.
Memetics builds on these four conceptual blocks to form a new paradigm of how culture evolved and is evolving. It illuminates a major decision point for humanity:
Will we allow natural selection to evolve us randomly, without regard for our happiness, satisfaction, or spirit? Or will we seize the reins of our own evolution and pick a direction for ourselves? Consciously spreading ideas you consider important is one way to combat mind viruses.
"And Ye Shall Know The Truth And The Truth Shall Set You Free"
Author's special note:What I find so fascinating with this story is that not one, let me repeat, not one of the 'main-stream' alternative media outlets have given this story any publication at all; much like my own.
More about this phenomenon here:The use of third party advocates or front groups for the dissemination of US government propaganda is well documented:Covert Bloggers Keyboard PeRpS
Within days of this posting and after one of the most profound witness interviews ever,proving that 9/11 was an inside job we see this:MK ULTRA at work in Tucson attack?
For the record the (2) senators that Suan Lindauer called to inform them of the Iraqi peace plan are:
Trent Lott: Is a former United States Senator from Mississippi and has served in numerous leadership positions in the House of Representatives and the Senate.
John McCain: Is the senior United States Senator from Arizona. He was the Republican nominee for president in the 2008 United States election.
Oh..BTY...Gabrielle Giffords...the nice lady that was shot in Arizona:She is a Democratic member of the United States House of Representatives, representing Arizona's 8thcongressional district since 2007.
As stated in The Ominous Parallels Report:
* Tactic of Replacement: Philosophical view that is used as “bait” to induce the collective to look in another direction i.e. to induce targets to spend their energy in the wrong direction, while the hidden plan un-folds. * Tactic of Counterfeits: When “truth” becomes evident, “others” ideals and symbols are employed for a defense, which, is a delay tactic that allows time to reconstruct a “false truth” leading a reaction in another direction.
As a U.S. Intelligence Asset, Susan Lindauer covered anti-terrorism at the Iraqi Embassy in New York from 1996 up to the invasion. Independent sources have confirmed that she gave advance warning about the 9/11 attack. She also started talks for the Lockerbie Trial with Libyan diplomats. Shortly after requesting to testify before Congress about successful elements of Pre-War Intelligence, Lindauer became one of the first non-Arab Americans arrested on the Patriot Act as an “Iraqi Agent.” She was accused of warning her second cousin, White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card and Secretary of State Colin Powell that war with Iraq would have catastrophic consequences. Gratis of the Patriot Act, her indictment was loaded with “secret charges” and “secret evidence.”
She was subjected to one year in prison on Carswell Air Force Base in Fort Worth, Texas without a trial or hearing, and threatened with indefinite detention and forcible drugging to shut her up. After five years of indictment without a conviction or guilty plea, the Justice Department dismissed all charges five days before President Obama’s inauguration.
The Terrifying Story of the Patriot Act and the Cover Ups of 9/11 and Iraq
What if the government decided to invent a great lie to sell a disastrous war and a questionable anti-terrorism policy? What would happen to the assets who know the truth?
Former CIA Asset Susan Lindauer provides an extraordinary first-hand account from behind the intelligence curtain that shatters the government’s lies about 9/11 and Iraq, and casts a harsh spotlight on the workings of the Patriot Act as the ideal weapon to bludgeon whistle blowers and dissidents. A terrifying true story of “black budget” betrayals and the Patriot Act, with its arsenal of secret evidence, indefinite detention and threats of forcible drugging, EXTREME PREJUDICE reveals one Asset’s desperate struggle to survive the brutal cover ups of 9/11 and Iraq.
EXTREME PREJUDICE delivers a high tension expose of the real facts surrounding the CIA’s advance warnings of 9/11 and Iraq’s contributions to the 9/11 investigation.
For the first time, it discloses the existence of a comprehensive peace framework before the War, which would have accomplished all major U.S. objectives in Baghdad without a single casualty. A true life spy thriller that goes inside the Iraqi Embassy and prison on a Texas military base, EXTREME PREJUDICE reveals the depths of deception by leaders in Washington and London to promote a questionable image of their successful anti-terrorism policy, and the shocking brutality used to suppress the truth of their failures from the American people and the world community.
Above all, EXTREME PREJUDICE offers a critical examination from the defendant’s chair of the Patriot Act’s assault on the most cherished Constitutional rights in a Court of law, when liberty and freedom to dissent from government policy are the highest stakes.
“Susan Lindauer deserves unreserved admiration for this brave and moving account of her steadfast refusal to crumble under the shameful abuses to which she was subjected. She has provided us with an overdue exposure of the depths to which governments are all too prepared to descend to prevent disclosure of their dishonesty and malfeasance, her knowledge having been gained through bitter personal experience.” –Robert Black, Q.C., Scottish architect of the Lockerbie Trial at Camp Zeist
Extreme Prejudice is memoir, action thriller, and cautionary tale on the risks citizens take when they go too far, know too much, and offer to tell the truth.
"And Ye Shall Know The Truth And The Truth Shall Set You Free"
IF AMERICANS ONLY KNEW - Posting #131
